05-08-2025
The zany tourism campaigns that worked – and the biggest failures
It's been 25 years since Tom Hanks lost his volleyball friend Wilson at sea in the hit film Castaway. And it's taken that long for Wilson to get his own happy ending – in an ad for Fiji, where the movie was filmed.
During the ad, a little girl and her mum rescue the ball from the beach, mend it and then take it out to see the sites, from rivers, villages and forests to sandy shores.
'It feels like we're giving fans of the classic film the closure they've longed for,' Harry Willis of Special PR (the company responsible for the piece) told Little Black Book.
Fiji will also be hoping it draws less inanimate visitors to its shores too.
Tourism advertising is big business: when done right, it can generate huge interest in a destination and, ultimately, many more visitors.
Do it wrong though, and it serves as just one more reason for tourists to stay away. Take a look at who got it right and who made a dreadful mistake, in this round-up of the best and worst tourism ad campaigns ever…
The hits
Aussie rules
Paul Hogan's deadpan Fair Dinkum Holiday ads from the 1980s are still fondly remembered for their unique way of highlighting 'the Wonder Down Under'. So it was no surprise when Australia Tourism drew on his legacy for a star-studded 2018 trailer for the (imaginary) film Dundee: The Son of A Legend Returns Home.
Featuring Isla Fisher as an outback vet, Chris Hemsworth as a wilderness guide and Margot Robbie as an out-of-control lager lout, it had viewers clamouring for the full-length feature – and resulted in a 26 per cent increase in initial enquiries about trips to the country, as well as its own entry on IMDB.
Dubai's show tune
Dubai spends a lot on high-profile ad campaigns (including 2021's offering featuring Jessica Alba and Zac Efron, and the latest one with a loved-up Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi). But its undisputed triumph was 2024's fantastic earworm, 'Where will Dubai take you now?'.
The kind of catchy show tune people will be singing in the shower for years to come, it's the soundtrack to a video directed by The Greatest Showman 's Michael Gracey, in which a bespectacled and positively un-starry man belts out the song while jazz-handing his way along beaches and through restaurants, yoga pavilions and markets, showcasing the best that the city state has to offer. Is it a coincidence that visitor numbers and hotel occupancy levels rose last year? We think not. If only it was on Spotify.
India's superlative spree
In 2009, before every tourism ad had to be star-studded and/or hilarious, this country built on its long-standing 'Incredible India!' campaign with this heart-warming tale of one man's solo trip through the country, from palm-trimmed beaches to snow-covered mountain tops.
Looking like a hoot to make, it also showed a host of brilliant experiences beyond the biggest-hitting sites – and it's still a fantastic advert for the country.
New Zealand's political stunt
What's New Zealand's best export? Rhys Darby, of Flight of the Conchords fame, of course – not least because he somehow managed to rope then-PM Jacinda Ardern into this 2018 mystery spoof about the country being left off maps on purpose.
A few months' later, an equally surprising sequel – featuring a hunt using a map created by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson – included one unexpected theory about who was responsible for the country's erasure: unlikely baddie and New Zealand superfan Ed Sheeran, who wanted to keep it all to himself.
Spain's glam turn
The 1980s was a time of Jackie Collins bonkbusters, dubious cocktails and flash cars – and Spain ticked all these boxes and more in its successful, nine-year 'España: Everything Under The Sun' campaign. It included this ad, which features a Club Tropicana-esque beach scene, zooming jet skis, a pneumatic Ferrari, a horse bucking at sunset, and plenty of women in high-cut swimsuits twirling sarongs. These days, the ad retains a certain so-bad-it's-good quality (imagine a cross between Baywatch and El Dorado).
The misses
Faux pas in The Philippines
The Philippines is choc-a-bloc with natural wonders. So it came as quite a surprise when it 'borrowed' some from other countries for its now-infamous 2023 ad campaign.
Bits of Switzerland, the rice terraces of Bali and the sand dunes of the UAE all featured in stock photography used in the advert, with the real locations quickly exposed by a Facebook sleuth and blogger. Understandably, the tourism board immediately terminated its contract with DDB Philippines, the ad agency responsible for the $900,000 campaign.
America's wurst ad
What exactly does the Bavarian town of Leavensworth, Washington have to offer the tourist? Stripping milkmaids and a rapping nutcracker, if this Noughties ad is anything to go by. The soundtrack, 'Gitcha Goomsba Up', doesn't quite have the finesse of 'Where Will Dubai Take You Now?', but that's far from the most problematic thing about this video, which combines a twerking troupe in dirndl tutus with wholesome clips of whitewater rafting, hot dogs and Christmas lights.
Vilnius's awkward innuendo
Sex sells – so goes the thinking behind Vilnius's campaign pitching the city as the 'G-Spot of Europe'. Why that tag line, you ask? Because 'nobody knows where it is but when you find it – it's amazing', apparently.
And absolutely not because a certain section of the global population (the one with a penchant for stag parties involving low-cost flights to Eastern Europe) conflates Lithuania with escorts. This one feels very much like an own goal. However, if you're still interested, you can build your own innuendo-charged Pleasure Map here.
Italy's social experiment
It's easy to see why the Italians hated their own 2023 ad campaign (and hate it they did, with the national media calling it 'grotesque' and 'vulgar').
Drawing on the country's storied history, the 'Open To Meravaglia' ad took Botticelli's Venus and recast her as a computer-generated 'virtual influencer', dressed in double denim and an Italia t-shirt. And, if that wasn't sacrilegious enough, the advert also featured a Slovenian winery masquerading as an Italian one.
Sweary Australia
The Aussies have a penchant for profanities. And some (stuffier) Brits took offence to the tag line for the country's 2007 ad campaign, in which a series of beautiful shots of Australia's attractions was followed by a woman in a swimsuit walking towards the camera as she asked, 'so where the bloody hell are you?'.
Complaints from viewers resulted in a UK TV ban, which was only lifted after an emergency visit from Australia's Tourism Minister. It was a watershed moment – in that the commercial could only be aired after 9pm (and roadside billboards featuring the slogan were removed too). Strewth.
